Sounds like we need far more affordable housing, healthcare and education in the U.S., a robust labor rights movement in Indonesia (and in the U.S… and everywhere), and open (or at least highly porous) borders everywhere so that migration, a natural human phenomenon, can remain enshrined as a human right globally and people can pay taxes where they live accordingly to support local economies. No one would have to game anything (or live in fear of being rounded up in the middle of the night, sent to a concentration camp, and deported), if we’d stop making migration itself a crime.

For millennia, humans were migratory. Denying anyone their access to free migration is a violation of human rights. The right to emigration without right to immigration creates open-air prisons of places with fewer opportunities for thriving, and begets crisis after crisis.

We need open borders, especially as climate collapse continues to beget, well, crisis after crisis, and force thousands (and eventually likely hundreds of millions) to migrate for survival.

I don’t think the best way to approach this is to fault nomads, but maybe I’m just sensitive because I am one. I think being nomadic is pretty normal for a human, though air travel has made us do it in ways that aren’t totally normal, but are more convenient. Certainly, living abroad in wildly different communities has been very good for my mental health and worldview, so I’ll say it’s still potentially within the bounds of human health, even if San Francisco to Bali doesn’t really fit an early human migratory pattern.

The point is, closed borders and strict visa laws and poverty wages in a world that is abundant enough to feed, house, clothe and care for everyone are not solutions; they’re just sadism.

TL;DR: Labor unions, everywhere. Open borders, everywhere. Don’t settle for less.